Subdomain Ranking Question
-
Hi All -
Quick question that I think I know the answer to, but I feel like I've been going around in circles a bit. My client is launching a new product and wants us to build a microsite for it (product.clientname.com). My client really dislikes their brand website, and wants to use paid media to push their audience to this new microsite. However, they also said want it to rank well organically. I feel uneasy about this, because of the subdomain vs. subfolder argument. I believe that the product will also be listed/featured on their main brand website.
What is the best way forward?
Thanks!
-
I understand the frustration of working with a big company where "because it is new" is a reason not to change the site. That is not a good way to run a business but inertia and people trying to protect their own positions often result in this type of situation. And there generally isn't much you can do to change this, sadly.
How terrible is the new site?
Does your client just not like it? Or did rankings/search volume/leads/sales plummet when it was introduced?
If it is the former, your client should just suck it up and stick with the current site design. It is the customers' preferences that matter and if the site is doing well, that is what counts.
If the latter then your client is right to want something different but I wouldn't count much on organic search traffic in that scenario. And I don't know that one working piece will drive company success, though perhaps your client hopes to use that smaller success to drive change for the rest of the site. Good luck with that.
Either way it solves your subdomain dilemma--in the first case you won't need one and in the second case it probably won't make a difference.
-
Thanks for your input, Linda. I couldn't agree more with your first point. It really comes down to a matter of budget and timing. Since their website is "new", getting the sign off from the execs would be near impossible.
You're right in that our client wants to distance this from the rest of the site. We're going to put a significant amount of paid media toward driving traffic here, and the client does not want to send anyone to their current site. Hence, why we're developing this new site.
As far as the subfolder, there are a few reasons. The CMS used on the main site is proprietary and managed by my client's parent company. We've worked with those folks in the past on other PPC landing pages and the results have been pretty bad. I think a subfolder for the most part is out of the question, unless our devs package it up in HTML and send it over.
-
Where does your client fall in the chain of command of the company? If s/he is at the very top, sunk costs should not dictate keeping a bad website, and if something different is better for this one product then it is better for all of the products.
Linda makes a really good point here. The website is not liked, then it should be fixed. This is an opportunity for the staff to learn what the "company" "thinks" the site should be or for the boss to admit that lax management allowed the project to jump the tracks. Learn, improve, move upwards.
We have redone lots of work here. Sometimes because it was my fault. Sometimes because we learned something. When those jobs were redone it was a really good day.
-
Where does your client fall in the chain of command of the company? If s/he is at the very top, sunk costs should not dictate keeping a bad website, and if something different is better for this one product then it is better for all of the products.
But assuming they can't have a total site redo, why not use a subfolder? Although Google's John Muller said subdomain or subfolder does not make a difference, there is enough evidence to the contrary that I'd go with a subfolder if at all possible.
Perhaps the subdomain is because the person wants to distance this part from the rest of the site.
But as we know, a big part of SEO is the way things are linked (including internally) and one robust, well-linked site is stronger than a string of independent microsites, which is partly why microsites are not popular anymore. And existing links to the overall domain will help boost this new section if it is correctly integrated. (Unless the rest of the site is really terrible, in which case this one section probably won't make much difference either way.)
I don't think subdomain/subfolder is the main issue here though. It seems that your client want this product separated--does that make the most sense for the overall business goals of the company (as opposed to the success of this one project)? That's the question that needs answering.
-
Sounds like the designers run the company.
-
Ha, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, their brand site is new (within the year) and is a result of their in-house team. We've discussed that, but probably out of the question.
-
My client really dislikes their brand website,
Make a new brand site that the client will love. Right now an ugly brand site is making the client run to a subdomain, which we know is not the best move.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Finding the reason behind not Ranking-UP
Hello, I hope you guys are doing well. I published an article about 2 months ago and I tried to write a rich article in regards to SEO. Also, did a keywords research and found my competitors. I created a lengthy but meaningful article from all the competitors. Here is the link to my Article and my targeted keyword is "CSC Scholarship 2020". You can check my domain DA & PA also. It is higher than the websites' DA, PA who are ranked on the top of the page. My content is also Lengthy and Meaningful and to-the-point but still, my Article is not generating any result for me. I want that, please investigate the main issue that is causing this problem.
Technical SEO | | HansiAliya1 -
Basic Redirection Question
I am doing a 301 Redirect from site ABC to site XYZ. I loaded the following .htaccess file by ftp to the ABC.com/ server: Redirect 301 / http://XYZ.com/ This was completed over 30 days ago, OSE is not showing any of the links and is failing to show that abc.com is redirected even though the MozBar shows a successful 301 http status code. Is this still just a waiting game or is it not advised to do a redirect this way for seo? PS: ahrefs is showing the redirect itself, however, it is not showing the links going to site ABC.com/ as passing to site XYZ.com/ . Any help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Vspeed0 -
Terrible branded ranking
I am at lost. My website has been live for about 3 months. Typing my name or my direct page title into google puts me on page 15. My site is indexed by google, a site:mywebsitename search - produces 202 results. My on page SEO isn't amazing buy it isn't terrible either. The website has 35+, 500 words+ reviews and a few incoming links from some occasional link building. 0 duplicate content. The website is animexcess.com
Technical SEO | | WebsiteEditor
My thoughts on what might be causing the problem, i am hoping that someone with a bit more SEO knowledge than myself can point me in the right direction. During development, i had duplicate content up on the site as placeholder while i wrote my own - All duplicate content has been removed for about 3 months now, but can this still be affecting me ranking? and to this extent? The entire website is in a sub-directory with 301 redirects - can this be affecting my ranking to this extent? The domain had a prior owner. Waybackmachine tells me that the domain had a page up in 2007. I bought it in 2010. If the prior owner built up a bad rep on this domain can is still be the cause for poor ranking 6 years later? I cannot file a reconsideration request since there are no manual actions taken against my site in WMT, any way around this? Its only been three months. I know 3 months isn't a very long time in the google ranking world but my my 2 week old, built in 1 week, secondary website is ranking on page 1 for some pretty solid terms, so i don't think 3 months is to short a time to expect a bit of results. My website is being crawled daily.
Any advice on how to move forward with fixing my website ranking will be much obliged. Thank you.0 -
Bug in Competitor Rankings Report?
I am looking at the report called: Rankings Report for [Competitor XXX] For all keywords in the report, the rankings on the main page say "Not in Top 50"... however when I drill down I can see that this is not true... there is a graph with valid rankings which were gathered as recently as March 20, 2013 (2 days ago) is this a known bug? Regards Jim Donovan
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Rank tracker and Rankings report differs
Hi all Is this normal? I have set up a campaign for a site. Tracking a variety of keywords. For one of them, which is a quite important keyword I've been working on I've moved down one step in my rankings report. This is first of all weird because my on page optimization went from grade c to a, and even weirder beacuse if I run Rank Tracker tool on the keyword and the URL I see that I've moved up 6 steps, to 15 in Google. Kinda makes it hard to grasp if I'm on the right path or not! (I've checked and they are both results on google.dk, same URL and same keyword - exact)
Technical SEO | | Budskab0 -
301 Redirect Question
I'm working on a site that has a lot of indexed pages and backlinks to both domain.com and www.domain.com. Will using a 301 redirect to send domain.com to www.domain.com merge all of the indexed pages and links over to www.domain.com, thereby strengthening the www?
Technical SEO | | Yo_Adrian0 -
Complex duplicate content question
We run a network of three local web sites covering three places in close proximity. Each sitehas a lot of unique content (mainly news) but there is a business directory that is shared across all three sites. My plan is that the search engines only index the business in the directory that are actually located in the place the each site is focused on. i.e. Listing pages for business in Alderley Edge are only indexed on alderleyedge.com and businesses in Prestbury only get indexed on prestbury.com - but all business have a listing page on each site. What would be the most effective way to do this? I have been using rel canonical but Google does not always seem to honour this. Will using meta noindex tags where appropriate be the way to go? or would be changing the urls structure to have the place name in and using robots.txt be a better option. As an aside my current url structure is along the lines of: http://dev.alderleyedge.com/directory/listing/138/the-grill-on-the-edge Would changing this have any SEO benefit? Thanks Martin
Technical SEO | | mreeves0 -
Lost page rank, am I in the sandbox?
Hi, Our page rank was 5 for the last 3 months. Before it was 4 for a long time. Today our page rank dropped to 0 and I have no idea why.. We didn't buy any links or did anything wrong.. I also checked every keyword rankings we are on but we didn't loose our spot in any keyword.. Is it a short term thing, or am I in the sandbox? How can I fix this problem or avoid from a worse situation..? www.gourmetmarketing.net We just changed the site template few times in last two months.. Thanks
Technical SEO | | onurkiyak0